Four months in review

 I shan't dance around the subject; we've been asked to write a blog post about how we think the media course is going so far. We're nearing the end of the first term, hitting our first deadlines and looking forward to Christmas. It's weird to think I've already been here four months. Feels like I was just enrolling last week.

Then again, although it feels like it's breezed by, I still feel like I've learned a fair amount since the start of the year. I've learned to look at situations and potential stories in a more critical way than I used to. Instead of just 'oh, that's interesting', it's more, 'who does this affect? what different angles are there to this?' which makes it sounds like I'm already a journalist, but really these thoughts are easier said than done. Sometimes it's really hard to see the other angle, but I'm trying to practice anyway.

In terms of the media class, I think it's going brilliantly. I could always use posting more blog posts on here, or doing more work outside of class, but I've been meeting all the deadlines and for me, that's impressive on it's own.

To me, media class is easily the most fun. Between the lecturers' senses of humour to the fact that it's all tech, makes it right up my street. I look forward to Tuesdays each week, and I'm not trying to suck up!! It's my favourite class, outstrips the others by a mile.

I've learned to use Adobe programs I otherwise used to quail from (except perhaps photoshop). I feel like I can already put together half-decent audio, video and print footage. The vocabulary in these domains is more complicated than I would like, but I am trying to use them as much as I can.

As to the question of what I could have done better... Well, there's always a window to work harder, and I guess that's mine. I want to try and do more independent media work, with the blog and some of my own video and audio, to make sure I really get to grips with the software & hardware.

I am so far completely comfortable with this course. I think I've made a good choice here. I've made a small group of good friends here too, and it's starting to feel like home. I think everything's great.

My first bit of news!

I've just finished filming and editing this, my very own news segment! Quite proud, to be honest.

Real radio..!

Soundbites about the Police Station by boiledpotato

This is our first radio recording, going out on the streets and accosting people for their views...

MySpace - too little too late or just on time?

Most people who've been big on the internet throughout the early 2000s will surely remember MySpace. To be honest I never really got into it myself; the website design always seemed counter-intuitive to me as navigation took longer than most sites. The other thing was that there wasn't anything to do. Which I can appreciate could be an argument for all social networking sites, but with Facebook there's always friends to talk to, statuses to read and so on. MySpace to me seemed to be very... isolating.

So, we all remember what it looked like:

Kind of '90s, in a way. Not as bad as the design for the Ryanair site, but at least there's no Comic Sans MS.

Well, we had an announcement last week: MySpace are coming back. Bigger and better than ever, apparently. I definitely have to appreciate that even though I was never into the site there were still a lot of people that were. But after they made no effort to keep the site going, in terms of new features and content, Facebook swiped up more than 60 per cent of it's users in the last 5 years.

Now they're planning to fight back. I don't blame a lot of these sites for trying, because like them I think it's near time for  a new thing. A new site. Facebook is phenomenal but it still has it's issues, especially with privacy and content upload. It's time for a change. But what options have we had? Twitter looked promising but at the end of the day it's only a microblogging site. There's not enough there for the kind of content that Facebook can provide.

There have been rumours about Google having something in the works that will 'change the face of social networking' but if that turns out anything as cryptic as Google Wave then I won't hold my breath for that to take over. But I think MySpace has quite a decent amount of potential.

It looks like they've already launched the beta of the new site, and I'm pretty impressed.

The picture is clickable for a bigger image. And I've just signed up to see what the fuss is about.

SHOCK AND HORROR - It's nothing new.

There are trending topics, straight from Twitter. There are status updates, exactly like Facebook. Private messages, exactly like Facebook.

There is nothing new to this site. It's slicker, and certainly prettier, but there's nothing original in this website. The services are the same as they'd always been, excapt that they've taken the best qualities from other sites and stuffed them in there, too.

Frankly, MySpace, I' dissappointed. You may have thought you were making a smart move by taking the best bits from other social networking sites and crammed them together, as though you're trying to make a super-social media website. But in fact you've just bored me rather considerably.

A word to the CEOs of these companies. To Mark Zuckerberg and Dick Costolo and Eric E. Schmidt, and to all those aspiring website developers out there: bring us something new. Bring us an interesting, original idea for a site that doesn't make us write status updates and upload photos. There are 200,000 places to do that. Bring us THE NEXT LEVEL.

Please. I'm sick of invites to FarmVille.